What’s Yours?

Whenever you submit a piece of writing, there’s often the requirement to ‘tell us a bit about yourself’.

Where does one start: reformed gambler, all-round lunatic and ragester; or mother of two, English tutor, likes tweed? Then there’s someone who was pulled over by the police at 4 a.m. on the M4 doing in excess of a ton, pulled out of a hedge by rozzers in N4 for brawling – let go with a warning, or the person who skid landed at the feet of two bobbies on the beat on the Isle of Dogs, when my bolting steed came down.

Which version of the self do people want?

This morning it’s: a 45 year old who likes passion fruit and hasn’t washed her hair since Saturday.

Disembodied Dolls’ Heads

I saw these in a local charity shop last week. I have applied a negative filter to amp up the general spooky nature of the collection.

Babies, generally, scare me. These, the more so.

People are

Bike Remains with Energy Drink

Symbiosis

 

 

The thorn tree throws sticks

For an imaginary dog

One woman does tai chi

Wearing sand-soled feet

Whilst the sky slopes off

Into the sea’s arms

And the sun bleeds out.

 

‘He not busy being born is busy dying’

The title is a line from the Bob Dylan song,  It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding) and it’s true, I suppose.

There are at least two ways of looking at the inevitability of that fact.  One is that we are lucky to be here at all. Another is the view that a friend shared with me once, not long before they too died.  That perspective went along the lines that the world is sad, bad place, filled with human suffering, in the main.  I refused to agree at the time.  And then, as if to prove the point somehow, the friend went right on ahead and died and made my own vault of pain a little more full than before.

In fact, the last decade seems to have been filled with people I love dying.  I miss one or other, or all of them on any given day, in a multiplicity of ways.  And yet I have reflected that on that one occasion, when I hotly denied the view that the world is a sad, bad place I think I did so, at least partially, in a reactive and naive way.

I was a player in the pantomime of human life.

Oh yes it is.

Oh no it’s not.

It’s behind you!

Actually, it’s not though, is it?  It’s ahead you – your death and mine.  The death of those we love is behind us, around us and ahead of us.  But  my question really is this?  Does the fact of all of us being busy dying, does that truly have the power to rob the whole world of all its possibility and beauty and joy?  Or is it just that the ego fears its own demise so very much, that it cannot conceive of a world of beauty existing, even when it itself is lost?

Are we so self-centred that we think our own suffering makes the whole world bad?  Look out of your window and see what you see.  It’s up to you which perspective to take.  No matter how bad things seem to get, we always have a choice about how to see things.

I’m sticking with the awe-struck interpretation of the world, and even the pantomime of humans, for now anyway.

Half-Life

 

 

 

 

Eye Street Level

Or look up at the blue?

Taken from inside of one of my favourite buildings; the Brutalist construction formerly known as Southend Central Library, now housing the Beecroft Gallery. All the books have gone downtown (minus Petula Clark).

It was the end of an era.

River Stour & Leafless Willow

Upriver from Constable

On the River Stour. Some people who take photos set up with tripods, and SLRs and zoom lenses and all kinds of wotnot. Me, I just prance around with a giant phablet, point and shoot, point and shoot baby.

Some good, some bad. The swan’s ok, although we had a bit of trouble with positioning the reeds…

Autumn from The Pod

I was going to title this View from the Pod, but that reminded me of the Kim Wilde song too much so I had to change it. I’m going to go and sleep in there sometime soon (but maybe not in winter).